Crop maps of Russia and its neighbors

I have often looked for detailed crop distribution maps for the countries of the former Soviet Union and found these hard to come by. Not any more! There is a fabulous on-line atlas of agriculture in Russia and neighboring countries.

It has descriptions and maps for a 100 crops, including potato and wheat of course, but also lesser known niceties as the Snowball Tree, Sea Bucktorn and Winter Squash. The maps are pretty, here is an example for Siberian Wild Rye (you know, Siberian Black-eyed Susan; Clinelymus sibiricus (L.) Nevski). Better still, they will be available for dowload in GIS format next year.

Distribution of Siberian wild rye

There are also entries for 540 wild crop relatives and other agriculturally relevant plants, and for pests, diseases and weeds.

Awesome.

Nibbles: Bees, Millennium Villages, Oaks, Wolf, CWR